How the stars work
Most "best of" lists favour big channels, because they rank by views. We don't. A video from a channel with 5,000 subscribers can earn five stars as easily as one from a channel with 5 million.
Three things, two points each
| What we measure | 1 point | 2 points |
|---|---|---|
| Reach for its size: views compared with the channel's subscribers | half as many views as subscribers | twice as many |
| Liked: likes compared with views | 1% or more | 2.5% or more |
| Talked about: comments per 1,000 views | 0.5 or more | 1.5 or more |
That gives up to 6 points, which become 1 to 5 stars. Only videos with 2 stars or more are listed.
Brand-new videos
A video less than 30 days old hasn't had time to reach its audience, so for new videos we also try scoring on likes and comments alone (weighted up to make a fair comparison) and use whichever is better.
What stars don't mean
Stars measure how an audience responded, using public numbers. They aren't a review, and they don't tell you whether a video is accurate. We also leave some things out entirely, whatever their numbers: fiction presented as history, anonymous movie uploads, and Shorts.